Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (11 page)

Graham looked up. ‘It’s what happened.’

‘Well, if that’s true, Graham,’ Hardy replied, ‘this has not been your lucky week.’

6

When the DA, Sharron Pratt, got the news that Graham Russo had been arrested without a warrant issued by her office, she angrily demanded that Glitsky report to her. She thought the police had seriously overstepped their bounds, particularly in this case where the larger issues surrounding assisted suicide needed to be thoroughly aired and debated. ‘I don’t understand,’ Pratt was saying, ‘why you didn’t come to me first, Lieutenant. Why did you just arrest him?’

‘We think he’s committed a murder.’ Glitsky didn’t yet understand Pratt’s anger, for while it was true that the police often came to the DA to get a warrant for an arrest, it was nearly as common to have inspectors make the arrest first. This tended to keep suspects from disappearing. ‘But look, ma’am, if you want, you can just dismiss the case.’

That’s what you’d like, isn’t it, Lieutenant?‘

‘No, ma’am. But it’s your right.’

‘Don’t try to con me, Lieutenant. That’s just what you want. If you’d come for a warrant for this boy’s arrest, you knew I would have turned you down, but now that you’ve arrested him first, you’ve focused the issue, putting me on the spot.’

Hands clamped behind her back, Pratt wore her half-moon glasses midway down her aristocratic nose. She looked over them.

Pratt was not Glitsky’s boss, and he didn’t much care how she felt about him, but he was trying to do his job, and considered his reply carefully before he gave it. ‘It was a timing issue,’ Glitsky said. ‘There was plenty of evidence to arrest, but if you want to play political football…’

Pratt’s eyes glared. Her nostrils flared. ‘Don’t you
dare
accuse me of playing politics with a man’s life. Your people made a mistake arresting this man.’

Glitsky couldn’t stop himself. ‘You know that the arresting inspector was a woman, don’t you?’

It slowed her for a moment. ‘That’s not the issue,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t care who arrested him. The point is we — this office — had not made a decision to prosecute. You knew we weren’t ready to issue a warrant, so you went ahead without one.’

‘I didn’t know that. Why would I even think it? Your office prosecutes homicides. What’s to know?’

Pratt nodded, as though Glitsky had confirmed something for her. She moved over to her desk, where the Russo file sat in its manila folder. ‘I’m going to bring this up with the mayor and the Board of Supervisors, Lieutenant. This police vendetta to discredit me, it has to stop.’

‘And why are we having this vendetta again?’ Glitsky asked. ‘I forget.’

‘Because I believe — and I’m
right —
that some of the things that you call crimes are simply not wrong, and I’m not going to prosecute them.’

‘I don’t call them crimes — the legislature does.’

Pratt was shaking her head. ‘I don’t care what’s on the books. The books are wrong. People are being hounded by you police, the city’s resources are being squandered by your harassment of prostitutes, casual marijuana users—’

‘Murderers?’

She leveled a finger at him. ‘That’s
exactly
my point. Based on the evidence I’ve seen here’ — the finger went down to the folder — ‘I don’t think Graham Russo is a murderer.’

‘You don’t think he killed his father?’

‘No, I
do
think he killed his father.’ She slapped her palm down on the desk. ‘
Of course
he killed his father, technically speaking,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

Deciding it would be wiser to sidestep a direct answer to that, Glitsky took a beat, tilted his head, ladled on the sincerity. ‘Then I really am missing something here. What’s the problem with us arresting him if you think he did it?’

Sighing heavily, Pratt pulled her chair over and sat down. ‘What I’m saying, Lieutenant, is that though technically this could have been a homicide—’

Glitsky interrupted. ‘Strout called it a homicide,’ he said, ‘so it’s a homicide.’

But she was shaking her head. ‘Regardless of that, it wasn’t a murder.’

‘No? Then what was it?’

‘An assisted suicide.’

‘Which is illegal.’

‘But not wrong. In fact it was
right
. The boy did the humane thing and it was probably the most difficult decision of his life. And you want to try him for murder?’

‘No. I arrested him for breaking a law. That’s my job.’

‘That’s not true. Your job is to process warrants through this office.
We
make the decision as to whether we’re going to charge a crime.’ All the way back in her chair, she pointed again, up at him, eyes flashing. ‘You police
knew
this office would make that distinction. So you circumvented me. You’ve been doing this kind of thing ever since I came on here. Can it be that you really think I don’t see it?’

Glitsky stepped over to a grouping of wing chairs at the side of the room and pulled one around, sitting on it. He pointed at the file, adopted a conversational tone. ‘You said you read this. So I’m curious — how do you rule out murder?’

‘I start with the Constitution, Lieutenant, by presuming the man innocent.’ When he didn’t comment, she continued with her own perfectly plausible theory on Sal Russo’s death: it was a mercy killing.

‘So you’re saying that from now on, in cases like this the DA decides we don’t need a jury trial to get at the facts? And what do we call this, the mercy rule?’ Pratt glared at him — it was no use arguing legal theory with her. He decided to return to the evidence. ‘Okay, then, what about the money?’

‘His father gave it to him. He loved him. He was still estranged from his other children. Apparently they hated him. Why would he want them to share his money?’

‘Then why didn’t Graham just admit it? Why did he lie about everything we asked him?’

‘He was cornered. He didn’t see a way to get out, so he panicked. People do it all the time.’

‘All right. How about the trauma to the head?’

‘He could have fallen down and knocked his head anytime before he died.’

Glitsky fell silent. There were many other evidentiary points, but he knew that Pratt would have an explanation for how each of them fit her own theory. And, in fact, she might be right. The truth might be exactly what Pratt thought it was.

But Glitsky believed that it shouldn’t be her call. It should go to trial, to a jury. That was how the system worked.

The DA sat back in her chair, fingers at her lips. ‘You know… Abe… I would think you’d be a little more sensitive to this issue. Didn’t your wife suffer terribly?’

His scar tightened through his lips. ‘I didn’t kill my wife. I didn’t help kill her.’

She came forward in her chair. ‘I didn’t say that. But she must have been in great pain.’

Glitsky, too, was on the front six inches of his chair. ‘She was taking drugs. She said they helped. She wanted to live as long as she could. She didn’t want to die.’

‘But what if she had wanted to die, Abe? Wouldn’t you have helped her? Wouldn’t you have wanted to?’

‘Of course I would have wanted to. I probably would have.’

‘And yet you don’t believe that’s what happened here, with Graham Russo and his father? You think what he did was wrong.’

He hung his head. Arguing with Pratt was like trying to move a cloud by pushing on it. ‘No,’ he said with all the patience he could muster, ‘I think what he did was illegal.’

She must have thought she’d convinced him. She put her elbows on the desk and spread her palms as though releasing a little bird she had between them. ‘Then the law should be changed.’

*
    
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*
    
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*

David Freeman’s associates called his conference room the Solarium. Under a glass-and-steel enclosure, rubber trees, ficus, lemons proliferated. Visible through the forest, outside, was an enclosed and landscaped courtyard, and this added to the greenhouse feel.

Dismas Hardy sat under the foliage at an elliptical mahogany table with Michelle Tinker. Demure to the point of shyness, Michelle possessed what Hardy knew to be a brilliant legal mind — far more focused, he thought, than his own. Freeman kept her on because, even though she was tongue tied before juries, she had a seemingly boundless aptitude for work and minutiae. And that’s exactly what Hardy had told Freeman he needed after he’d come in this morning.

He was going to be working with Graham Russo, and that case was going to take some significant portion of the time he was now giving to Tryptech. Would Freeman mind letting him borrow a workhorse who would take off some of the Tryptech load? Freeman, not very convincing hiding his pleasure at Hardy’s decision to take the criminal case, had been glad to comply.

Michelle had both an accounting and a law degree. In her mid-thirties, she was married with no children. Once you got beyond the shyness, she was friendly and well spoken, totally professional. Hardy knew Dyson Brunei would get along well with her, and she jumped at the invitation to assist with Tryptech. The lawsuit was all numbers and paper — she’d never see a jury, possibly not even a judge.

It was nearly five o’clock and Hardy had been getting her up to speed for the better part of two hours, outlining the issues, trying to acquaint her with the players. If Michelle’s questions were any indication, she seemed to have absorbed most of it.

His files were in cardboard boxes that he’d carried with him down to the Solarium. Michelle was going to be reading them over the next several days. This was authorized full-time billing.

‘So what about your role?’

Hardy smiled. ‘I’ll keep my finger in, but I’ve got other commitments, and this thing has been eating up all my time — it’s way too much for one person to handle.’

‘But you’ll still be on it? I’m reporting to you, not David?’

Hardy nodded. ‘The buck still stops here.’

‘Where?’

They turned to see Freeman, just back from court, a sartorial mess as usual, standing in the doorway. ‘Where does the buck stop? With you? You stealing my associates?’

Hardy nodded. ‘As we discussed. Michelle’s going to help me out with Tryptech. She said she had the time.’

Out of force of habit Freeman glared at them both, but then he focused on Michelle and his look softened. ‘Watch this man,’ he said, ‘he’s unorthodox and dangerous.’

Freeman reached into his breast pocket and extracted a cigar. Thoughtfully, he bit off the end, spit the tip into his hand, and deposited it into one of the potted plants. Finally, he spoke to Hardy. ‘When’s the last time you saw Graham Russo?’

‘After lunch,’ Hardy replied. ‘Couple of hours ago in jail. Why?’

Freeman was famous for his dramatic flair in the courtroom. He played it out now, lighting his cigar, taking his time, exhaling a long plume. ‘Nobody’s called you?’

Hardy didn’t like the sound of this. ‘No, nobody’s called me. Quit the games, David, what’s going on? Is Graham all right?’ He was up out of his chair.

‘I’d say he’s probably better than the last time you saw him. The word at the Hall was they were letting him go. I’d’ve thought somebody would’ve called you.‘

*
    
*
    
*
    
*
    
*

‘In a startling development today, District Attorney Sharron Pratt has announced in a special press briefing that she has declined to file charges against Graham Russo, the lawyer and former federal court clerk who’d been arrested in the apparent assisted suicide of his father, Sal.’

Hardy sat in the Little Shamrock at the far end of the bar, watching the television above it. It was still light outside the wide front windows, though traffic had thinned out on Lincoln Boulevard. Frannie would be here soon to meet him for the sacred and traditional Date Night — nearly every Wednesday since they’d been married. They would most often meet at the Shamrock — Hardy would drive halfway home, Frannie would cab it halfway downtown — and go someplace for dinner, maybe a movie, some live music.

Hardy sipped his stout and glanced up again at the tube.

Pratt’s face filled the screen, the six-second sound bite all the pols lived for. ‘I’ve read the file on this case and the autopsy revealed an advanced, irreversible brain tumor. Mr Russo was in great pain with no hope of recovery, and whoever helped ease him from this mortal coil should be congratulated, not prosecuted.’

Frannie was suddenly at his elbow, a married kiss on the cheek, pulling up the stool next to him as the television reeled her in.

The pretty young newscaster was continuing. ‘Right-to-die groups across the country have already begun applauding the DA’s action, while police officials here in the city refused to comment on Graham Russo’s arrest or subsequent release. Russo’s attorney, Dismas Hardy, who denied his client had killed anybody, said Mr Russo had no plans to sue the city for false arrest, so that
may
be the end of this episode, but sources at the Hall of Justice say they wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

‘That would be you,’ Frannie said. ‘Dismas Hardy, not the sources at the Hall of Justice.’

‘That’s me,’ he agreed. ‘Fame and glory.’

But the story wasn’t over. The screen widened to include the Serious Anchor. ‘One thing seems certain, though, Donna — the district attorney’s controversial decision will inflame the already heated national debate over assisted suicide.’

‘That’s a good bet, Phil. This was a political broadside by Sharron Pratt. No doubt of it. It’s going to have ripple effect.’

Phil nodded sagely and met the camera’s eye. ‘And meanwhile, our Bay Area Action News team has learned that the state attorney general’s office has not ruled out its own investigation into Sal Russo’s death. Graham Russo is a free man tonight, but who can say for how long?’

‘Who indeed, Phil?’

Hardy stood and went around behind the bar. He reached up and turned off the television. ‘How can there be so many idiots? Where do they come from?’

‘How’d you get Graham out of jail so fast?’ Frannie asked.